Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most populist of them all? A comparison of League and Five Star Movement voters

Abstract

The article investigates the voting determinants for partners of the first populist government in Western Europe, the first Conte cabinet. Although the Five Star Movement (FSM) and the League share a common populist root, they differ in their ideological morphology: the FSM embodies an almost pure populism with inclusionary tendencies, while the League expresses an exclusionary populism clearly anchored to the Right. The article explores how populism affects voting choices for these two parties, looking at the interconnections between the thin-centred populist ideology, other host ideologies and policy preferences. We show the importance of populism as a predictor of voting choices for these two parties, as well as marked ideological differences between the two electorates. Moreover, support for the main policies of the government has been mixed, a symptom of the poor cohesion between these two parties.